Amanda Cox is an award-winning faith-based fiction author who uses her background in counseling to tell true-to-life stories about healing and home. In her fifth novel, she explores how finding community in unexpected places can help us start anew in the face of devastation. The Bitter End Birding Society follows an unlikely group of amateur bird watchers who learn to navigate life’s many obstacles hand in hand. Here’s everything you need to know before the book hits shelves on August 19!
Trigger Warning: The Bitter End Birding Society contains discussions of gun violence and school shootings, suicide, vision loss, and death of a spouse, as well as brief mentions of terminal illness, miscarriage, car accidents, traumatic brain injuries, and depression. Please exercise personal care while reading.
Synopsis
After a harrowing incident in her kindergarten classroom earns Ana Leigh Watkins the undesired title of hometown hero, she decides to get away for the summer to avoid all the unsettling attention. Her destination is Bitter End, Tennessee, a small town in the Appalachian Mountains where Ana’s family roots run deep. There, she plans to spend the next few months helping her great-aunt Cora prepare to sell her house. What she doesn’t anticipate is being pulled into the ranks of the Bitter End Birding Society.
The miscellaneous members who make up this group of amateur bird watchers, all seemingly on their own healing journeys, teach Ana about the restorative power of nature. And though she’s initially reluctant to join their flock, Ana can’t help but feel she fits right in with this motley crew. Meanwhile, she begins to unearth some long-buried family secrets surrounding the forbidden love between her grandparents — a preacher’s son and a moonshiner’s daughter. These revelations set her off on a mission to repair the fractured relationship between two estranged Bitter End residents whose friendship got caught in the crossfire of a decades-old local tragedy.
A Literary Journey Steeped in Faith
Something indefinable shifted in the atmosphere, and Ana slowly sat up, as did everyone else in their party. Though it wasn’t a chapel, the place had felt holy. The thump of her ailing heart had kept time with the jubilant, hopeful song of God’s creation, reminding her even in a broken world, there was still wonder and delight to be found.
— Amanda Cox, The Bitter End Birding Society
Amanda Cox’s The Bitter End Birding Society demonstrates the power of belief: in God, in each other, and in ourselves. Her narrative reaches a hand out to readers navigating struggles akin to those of her protagonists, encouraging them to put credence in the healing process. Loss, trauma, grief — these hardships are an inescapable fact of life. But they don’t have to define us. With trust at the helm, there’s a way forward from desolation. If you, like the characters in this story, have ever found your faith in the world shaken, Cox’s hopeful message will be a balm on your weary spirit.
An Inspiring Perspective on New Beginnings
Now she walked alongside what was once an old stone wall. A remnant perhaps of an ancient boundary line between one man’s land and another’s.
Moss grew over the stones, infiltrating every crack. Tree roots had burrowed beneath its foundations, causing the once-straight line to bend and buckle. Nature had a way of breaking down walls built by human hands. Gently, gradually. Not with wrecking balls but by infusing life.
Maybe that was why this group was drawn to nature. It was a living example of what they all craved. Little by little, tenaciously reclaiming life.
— Amanda Cox, The Bitter End Birding Society
As her story opens, Ana Leigh Watkins is on the run from her traumatic past. Her summer in Bitter End is meant to be a reprieve from the local hero role she’s unintentionally stepped into. Perhaps, she thinks, the mountains will offer her the clean slate she so desperately craves — if not forever, then at least for the next few months. So, when Bitter End confronts her with a different kind of troubled history, it’s not exactly the fresh start Ana was looking for. But, as she learns, it might just be what she’s needed all along.
Through investigating her family legacy, Ana connects with locals equally starved for a new beginning. Together, they realize that beauty and hope always wait on the other side of despair. Our darkest moments are doorways to second chances; across the threshold lies healing. It’s ours to claim if we only gather the courage to step through.
A Heartwarming Look at What It Means To Belong
‘We’ll scare off the birds if we keep on yapping.’
‘I’d rather miss the birds than miss the point.’
He quirked an eyebrow.
‘Of why we’re out here,’ she continued after she’d pulled in the necessary oxygen while they crested the small hill. ‘You ought to know that I don’t come out here every Thursday for the birds, Sam.’
— Amanda Cox, The Bitter End Birding Society
An ailing widow. A shaken kindergarten teacher. A guilt-stricken ex-pastor. An angsty teenager (and his mom). A couple of zany wedding organizers. And a stray dog. That’s the ragtag group of former strangers who make up the Bitter End Birding Society. What do any of these people have in common? On the surface, not much. Yet the revitalizing effect of nature brings them together, forging a found-family bond neither distance nor personal differences could ever dare to disturb. Easily the most endearing part of this story, the fortuitous friendship that blossoms between the Bitter End Birding Society members is enough to restore one’s fragile faith in humanity.
A Poignant Exploration of Self-Forgiveness
A core memory she’d carried with her from her own elementary days was one of the few things that had kept her sane over the past several months. Those many years ago, the motivational speaker had stood on the stage in the school auditorium, framed by ugly mauve velvet curtains, and told the eager ears of Pearson Elementary that bravery wasn’t the absence of fear. It was about being afraid and doing the thing anyway.
— Amanda Cox, The Bitter End Birding Society
Each character in The Bitter End Birding Society is weighed down by something: regret, fear, resentment. The most potent of these burdens is guilt. Ana’s great-aunt Cora struggles to relinquish the responsibility she feels for the tragedy that rocked Bitter End 66 years prior. Regardless of reality, she blames herself for inciting the incident, deeming herself unworthy of forgiveness.
That all changes when Ana comes to town and shakes up Cora’s closed-off existence. Decades’ worth of deeply ingrained shame can’t be upended overnight. Still, through the example of her Birding Society peers, Cora learns to unshackle herself from the paralyzing prison of self-condemnation. It’s a lesson every character absorbs in turn. Once they escape the grasp of their pasts, the future opens up in previously inconceivable ways. And with their newfound friends by their side, they finally feel ready to face it head-on.
Final Thoughts
The Bitter End Birding Society by Amanda Cox is a heartfelt reflection on reconciliation, faith, and the healing nature of community. Each story in Cox’s growing oeuvre promises to instill a sense of hope, even when addressing sensitive subject matter. On that front, this novel succeeds spectacularly. With its tender characters and uplifting moral, Cox’s latest work nourishes the soul, leaving readers a little less burdened upon flipping the final page.
You’ll love The Bitter End Birding Society if you enjoyed these books:
- All We Thought We Knew by Michelle Shocklee
- Born of Gilded Mountains by Amanda Dykes
- Hope Beyond the Waves by Heidi Chiavaroli
- The Light on Horn Island by Valerie Fraser Luesse
- The Songbird of Hope Hill by Kim Vogel Sawyer
Bookstr’s The Bitter End Birding Society Dream Cast:
- Maya Erskine as Ana Leigh Watkins, a kindergarten teacher reeling from recent trauma
- Jessica Lange as Cora Whitt, Ana’s great-aunt
- Glenn Close as Marilyn Chambers, Ana’s great-aunt and Cora’s ex–best friend
- Michael B. Jordan as Sam, a hunky shepherd-cowboy
If you want to add The Bitter End Birding Society to your TBR, you can preorder it on Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Amazon. Thank you to Revell for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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